[texhax] white space problem

[Donald Arseneau]

Tom Schneider <toms at ncifcrf.gov> writes:

> Seems that I'm the person.  But I don't know how to read the code
> enough to make an appropriate change.  If you know how, I'd much
> appreciate it.

The only change I see from basic (old) LaTeX is the change of "," 
to ";" so one solution is to grab the current definition of cite
(\@citex specifically) from latex.ltx and put it in cell.sty (.cls?) 
but changing the "," to ";".

This might bother users of very old LaTeX versions by introducing
incompatabilities though.

> > \usepackage{cite}
> > \renewcommand\citepunct{;\penalty5000\ }
> > or
> > \renewcommand\citepunct{;~}
> 
> You mean I should add this to the cell.sty?  Exactly what change
> should I do?

I was thinking of in your document, after cell.sty, to over-write 
the definition with a functioning new one.  But yes, it would be 
quite sensible to replace the cite definition with loading another
package like "cite", which should relieve the burden of tracking
changes to LaTeX.  Use \RequirePackage or \RequirePackageWithOptions  
rather than \usepackage.  Check that the features meet the cell
requirements.

> > And if bibtex were anything but apparent abandonware, it would have
> > been changed to ignore spaces after commas many years ago.
> 
> Isn't it a key part of the LaTeX system???

Yes, and it hasn't been maintained properly.

-- 
Donald Arseneau                          asnd at triumf.ca